Anne Enright | |
|---|---|
 Enright at Literaturhaus Köln, 18 November 2008 | |
| Born | Anne Teresa Enright (1962-10-11)11 October 1962 (age 63) Dublin, Ireland |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Alma mater | |
| Period | Contemporary |
| Genre | Novel,short story |
| Subject | Family Love Motherhood[1] |
| Years active | 1991–present |
| Notable works |
|
| Notable awards | Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, 1991 Encore Award, 2001 Man Booker Prize, 2007 Irish Novel of the Year, 2008 |
| Spouse | Martin Murphy |
| Children | 2 |
Anne Teresa Enright[2]FRSL (born 11 October 1962) is an Irish writer. The first Laureate for Irish Fiction (2015–2018) and winner of theMan Booker Prize (2007), she has published eight novels, many short stories, and a non-fiction work calledMaking Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, about the birth of her two children. Her essays on literary themes have appeared in theLondon Review of Books andThe New York Review of Books, and she writes for the books pages of TheIrish Times andThe Guardian. Her fiction exploresthemes such as family, love, identity and motherhood.[3]
Enright won the2007 Man Booker Prize for her fourth novelThe Gathering. Her second novel,What Are You Like?, was shortlisted in the novel category of the2000 Whitbread Awards. Her 2012 novelThe Forgotten Waltz won the Andre Carnegie Medal for Fiction. Her novelThe Green Road was shortlisted for theWomen's Prize for Fiction and won The Irish Novel of the Year (2015). In 2025, Enright was named as a recipient of aWindham-Campbell Prize, awarded in recognition of her life's work.[4]
Anne Enright was born inDublin, Ireland, and was educated atSt Louis High School, Rathmines. She won an international scholarship toLester B. Pearson United World College of the Pacific inVictoria, British Columbia, where she studied for anInternational Baccalaureate for two years. She then completed a BA in English and Philosophy atTrinity College Dublin. She began writing in earnest when she was given an electric typewriter for her 21st birthday. She won aChevening Scholarship to theUniversity of East Anglia'sCreative Writing Course, where she studied underAngela Carter andMalcolm Bradbury and completed anMA degree.[5][6][7]
Enright was a television producer and director forRTÉ in Dublin for six years[8] and produced the RTÉ programmeNighthawks for four years.[3] She then worked in children's programming for two years and wrote on weekends. She began writing full-time in 1993.[9] Her full-time career as a writer came about when she left television due to a breakdown, later remarking: "I recommend it [...] having a breakdown early. If your life just falls apart early on, you can put it together again. It's the people who are always on the brink of crisis who don't hit bottom who are in trouble."[10] Of her time spent working behind the scenes as a producer, Enright said: "There was a great buzz and sometimes I felt like awarding myselfpurple hearts for the work I was doing."[10] It was a time of "drinking too much" and "hanging around" with people "who don't really have steady jobs".[10]
Enright lives inDublin, having previously lived inBray,County Wicklow, until 2014. She is married to Martin Murphy, who wasdirector of thePavilion Theatre inDún Laoghaire and now works as an adviser to theArts Council of Ireland.[10] They have two children, a son and daughter.[10]
Enright has described her working practice as involving "rocking the pram with one hand and typing with the other".[10]
Critics have suggested that it was from the work ofFlann O'Brien that Enright derived her early efforts.[10] The year 1991 brought the publication ofThe Portable Virgin, a collection of her short stories.Angela Carter (who, as Enright's former creative writing teacher, knew her well) called it "elegant, scrupulously poised, always intelligent and, not least, original."[10]
Enright's first novel was published in 1995. TitledThe Wig My Father Wore, the book explores themes such as love, motherhood and theCatholic Church. The narrator of the novel is Grace, who lives in Dublin and works for a tackygame show. Her father wears a wig that cannot be spoken of in front of him. Anangel called Stephen who committed suicide in 1934 and has come back to earth to guide lostsouls moves into Grace's home and she falls in love with him.[11]
Enright's second novel,What Are You Like?, was published in 2000. Abouttwin girls called Marie and Maria who are separated at birth and raised apart from each other in Dublin andLondon, it looks at tensions and ironies between family members. It was shortlisted in the novel category of theWhitbread Awards.[12]
Enright's third novel,The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch, published in 2002, is afictionalised account of the life ofEliza Lynch, an Irish woman who was the consort ofParaguayanpresidentFrancisco Solano López and became Paraguay's most powerful woman in the 19th century.[13]
Enright's 2004 book,Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, is a collection of candid and humorous essays aboutchildbirth and motherhood.
Her fourth novel,The Gathering, won theMan Booker Prize in 2007. Theaide-de-camp of President McAleese acknowledged the result.[10] A positive review inThe New York Times stated that there was "no consolation" inThe Gathering.[10] A scene inThe Gathering is set in the foyer ofBelvedere Hotel.[14]
Enright's seventh novel,Actress, was selected for the longlist for theWomen's Prize for Fiction 2020. It tells the story of a daughter detailing her mother's rise to fame in late twentieth-century Irish theatre, Broadway, and Hollywood.[15]
Her writing has appeared in various magazines and newspapers.The New Yorker has published her writing in seven years over two decades: 2000, 2001 and 2005, 2007, 2017, 2019 and 2020.[16] The 4 October 2007 issue of theLondon Review of Books published Enright's piece "Disliking the McCanns" aboutKate and Gerry McCann, the British parents of the three-year-old child Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in suspicious circumstances while on holiday with her family in Portugal in May 2007.[17][18][19][20]Mary Kenny described Enright as "irrationally prejudiced", a woman with "bad judgement", and questioned an apology which Enright issued.
Enright was once a regular contributor toBBC Radio 4, and has also reviewed for RTÉ.[21][22][23] She has also been inThe Dublin Review,The Irish Times,The Guardian,Granta andThe Paris Review.
In 2011, the Irish Academic Press published a collection of essays about her writing, edited by Claire Bracken and Susan Cahill.[24] Her writing is illustrated in the video "Reading Ireland".[25] Enright received theIrish PEN Award for Literature in 2017.[26]
TaoiseachEnda Kenny appointed Enright as the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction. During her time as Laureate for Irish Fiction, Enright promoted people's engagement with Irish literature through public lectures and creative writing classes. She later took up teaching atUCD's School of English, beginning in the 2018–19 academic year.[2]
 |
| Title | Year | First published | Reprinted/collected | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "The hotel" | 2017 | Enright, Anne (6 November 2017)."The hotel".The New Yorker. Vol. 93, no. 35. pp. 58–60. | ||
| "Solstice" | 2017 | Enright, Anne (13 March 2017)."Solstice".The New Yorker. Vol. 93, no. 4. pp. 68–70. |
What about the piece written in 2007 by Booker-prize winner Anne Enright concerning the parents of Madeleine McCann...
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